The Mennonites in Indiana and Michigan

The Mennonites in Indiana and Michigan
Author: John C. Wenger
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2000-10-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1579104568

A comprehensive and sympathetic history of all branches of the Mennonites and Amish, including a portrayal of their doctrine, life, and piety. It attempts to present a true picture of the Christian bodies in Indiana and Michigan which are descended from the European Anabaptists of the sixteenth century.

In Pursuit of Faithfulness

In Pursuit of Faithfulness
Author: Rich Preheim
Publisher: Herald Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-05-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781513800356

In 1841, four Amish Mennonite families left their homes in southwestern Pennsylvania and traveled in horse-drawn wagons to Elkhart County, Indiana. Their journey was distinctly American, as they joined a wave of white settlers searching for new and cheaper lands where they could live, work, and worship. It was also distinctly Anabaptist, as they sought to live out complicated commitments to Christ, nonviolence, and community. In this lively narrative, historian and journalist Rich Preheim investigates the heritage and innovations of Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference, an area conference of Mennonite Church USA, that have profoundly shaped Mennonite faith and practice since the nineteenth century. Standing at the crossroads of tradition and change, Mennonites in Indiana and Michigan wrestle to pursue faithfulness to Christ in the twenty-first century.

Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War

Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War
Author: James O. Lehman
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2007-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801886720

Explores the moral dilemmas faced by various religious sects and how these groups struggled to come to terms with the effects of wartime Americanization-- without sacrificing their religious beliefs and values.

Horse-and-buggy Mennonites

Horse-and-buggy Mennonites
Author: Donald B. Kraybill
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0271028653

Examining how the Wengers have cautiously and incrementally adapted to the changes swirling around them, this book offers an invaluable case study of a traditional group caught in the throes of a postmodern world."--Jacket.

Train Up a Child

Train Up a Child
Author: Karen Johnson-Weiner
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780801884955

Train Up a Child explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world. Surveying settlements in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, Johnson-Weiner finds that, although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct, there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes—about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, even school design—to strengthen religious ideology, preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity, and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society. In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date, Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.

Shipshewana

Shipshewana
Author: Dorothy O. Pratt
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2004-10-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0253023564

A cultural history of a northern Indiana Amish community and its success in maintaining itself and resisting assimilation into the larger culture. While most books about the Amish focus on the Pennsylvania settlements or on the religious history of the sect, this book is a cultural history of one Indiana Amish community and its success in resisting assimilation into the larger culture. Amish culture has persisted relatively unchanged primarily because the Amish view the world around them through the prism of their belief in collective salvation based on purity, separation, and perseverance. Would anything new add or detract from the community’s long-term purpose? Seen through this prism, most innovation has been found wanting. Founded in 1841, Shipshewana benefited from LaGrange County’s relative isolation. As Dorothy O. Pratt shows, this isolation was key to the community’s success. The Amish were able to develop a stable farming economy and a social structure based on their own terms. During the years of crisis, 1917–1945, the Amish worked out ways to protect their boundaries that would not conflict with their basic religious principles. As conscientious objectors, they bore the traumas of World War I, struggled against the Compulsory School Act of 1921, negotiated the labyrinth of New Deal bureaucracy, and labored in Alternative Service during World War II. The story Pratt tells of the postwar years is one of continuing difficulties with federal and state regulations and challenges to the conscientious objector status of the Amish. The necessity of presenting a united front to such intrusions led to the creation of the Amish Steering Committee. Still, Pratt notes that the committee’s effect has been limited. Crisis and abuse from the outer world have tended only to confirm the desire of the Amish to remain a people apart, and lends a special poignancy to this engrossing tale of resistance to the modern world. “In this careful community study, Pratt (a professor and assistant dean at Notre Dame) analyzes the tension between assimilation and cultural distinctiveness among the northern Indiana Amish in the 19th and 20th centuries. . . . A worthy case study of resistance to change.” —Publishers Weekly

Puzzles of Amish Life

Puzzles of Amish Life
Author: Donald Kraybill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 142
Release: 1998-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1680992619

Revised edition! People's Place Book #10. A sociologist provides a way to understand the Amish people's intentional way of living in a world far different from their own. Fun to read. How do the Amish thrive in the midst of modern life? Why do the Amish separate themselves from the modern world? Why do a religious people spurn religious symbols and church buildings? Why is humility a cherished value? Why do a gentle people shun disobedient members? How do the Amish regulate social change? Why is ownership of cars objectionable, but not their use? Why are some modes of transportation acceptable and other forbidden? Why are tractors permitted around barns but not in fields? Why are horses used to pull modern farm machinery? Why are telephones banned from Amish homes? Why are some forms of electricity acceptable while others are rejected? How is modern machinery operated without electricity? Why are some occupations acceptable and others taboo? Why do the Amish use the services of professionals -- lawyers, doctors, and dentists -- but oppose higher education? Why do Amish youth rebel in their teenage years? Are the Amish freeloading on American life? Are the Amish behind or ahead of the modern world?

No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached
Author: Rachel Nafziger Hartzler
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1620321793

No Strings Attached is the story of a Mennonite congregation in Indiana that existed for eighty-six years. The congregation began during the social and religious turmoil of the 1920s when some Mennonites in North America held to rigid doctrines and ethics implemented by central authority, and others operated with a congregational polity and became more assimilated into secular culture. The struggle between these two different understandings of faithfulness was most passionately played out in northern Indiana. Placing the narrative of this congregation within the context of 500 years of Mennonite history illustrates the grace and the tension that has both beset and empowered a unique group of people who began as radical reformers. Although no strings attached refers to the women's headwear during the 1920s, which had no strings, it could also be the story of the pastor eating lunch on the peak of the steep roof of the church building! Reflecting on stories of these Mennonite people is an invitation to move into the future with courageous hope. Believing and behaving differently has not prevented Middlebury Mennonites from treating each other respectfully, living in a community of love, joy, and peace, and offering God's healing and hope to each other and to the world.

Disquiet in the Land

Disquiet in the Land
Author: Fred Lamar Kniss
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1997
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780813524238

Mennonites have long referred to themselves as "The Quiet in the Land," but their actual historical experience has been marked by internal disquiet and contention over religious values and cultural practice. As Fred Kniss argues in his impressive study of Mennonite history, the story of this sectarian pacifist group is a story of conflict. How can we understand the ironic phenomenon of Mennonite conflict? How do ideas and symbols-both those of the American mainstream and those that are specifically Mennonite-influence the emergence and course of this conflict? What is the relationship betweenintra-Mennonite conflict and the changing historical context in which Mennonites are situated? Through a rigorous analysis of a century of disputes over dress codes, congregational authority, and religious practice, Kniss offers the tools both to understand conflict within a specific religious group and to answer larger questions about culture, ideology, and social and historical change.

The Mennonites of America

The Mennonites of America
Author: C. Henry Smith
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2007-03-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1556353154

Although the story of the religious life of the Mennonites may be told in few words, yet they have been the founders of the first German colony in America and have been among the pioneers in many of the frontier settlements in the westward expansion of the American people. And for this reason their history is of interest also to the student of general American history. I have attempted therefore to trace in this volume not only the history of the Mennonite church but also the complete life story of the Mennonite people, and have treated such phases of the subject as I could find material for. I have attempted further to cover the entire field of American Mennonite history and have tried to place every event of importance in its proper perspective. So far as possible I have tried to be impartial toward the various branches of the church and have given each the amount of space which according to my judgment is importance deserved. --from the Introduction